Dear Colleagues,

The works of Jean Bénabou and other pioneers of category theory deserve to be preserved. I'm very grateful to Thomas for taking the first steps toward to facilitate such a preservation, by making kindly these manuscripts available on his web site. Thomas's work to popularise the ideas of Jean Bénabou, through his many notes on fibred categories, distributors, etc. have also been very influential to me. I applaud any further efforts toward retyping and publishing of reprints as well — the existing TAC reprints (e.g. of Lawvere and others) have been invaluable for me as a researcher in the youngest generation trying to pick up the pieces of category theory from the 'space age' that might otherwise be forgotten by people my age if not for the efforts of our colleagues to preserve them.

There's been too many times when I learned something first from a 'modern' source, perhaps filtered through the viewpoint of logicians and computer scientists, only to find that the primary source contains a much more comprehensive and satisfactory account. Taking up the challenge of preserving and making more accessible the old manuscripts will also do a lot to combat the perceived dominance of folklore in category theory.

If there's anything I can do to support this work (including typesetting!), I'm at your service.

Thanks,
Jon

On Fri, Jan 19, 2024, at 11:34 AM, Thomas Streicher wrote:
>> > I am fully aware that Jean was a controversial figure in his days.
>>
>> Could you indicate what controversy this was?
>
> It started before I got into categorical circles in the mid 80s.
> Some of its traces can be found on the categories list.
>
> One of the visible expressions is Jean's 1985 JSL article where he
> devotes 2 pages explaining why his work was superior to the one of
> Par'e and Schumacher in a way much more explicit than usual.
>
> As I understand it he presented his work 1974 in lectures of at Montreal.
> A couple of years later Pare and Schumacher came up with their long
> article phrasing things in the language of indexed cats. Jean
> complained about certain defects of the latter approach. But as I
> understand he was essentially upset that they published his material
> before him. But he definitely was a perfectionist and the writing of
> the book was never finished.
>
> That is the impression of a person who was not involved those days and
> just knows things from rumour and what people said.
>
> I know Jean as a very polite person but also that under certain
> circumstances he could easily "explode".
>
> I heard him talk the first time at Logic Colloquium in Firenze in 1982
> where he gave a very condensed version of his later JSL article
> including the controversy. I noticed that there was an obvious tension
> in the room. But I didn't care and rather got curious about fibered
> categories. I received very early a copy of Roisin's handwritten notes
> which I read with great delight. Over the years I got into it more and more
> and finally when asked to lecture on it in Munich in 1999 I strated to
> prepare some notes for myself in order to not forget about material
> which was not easily available. For me it is an indispensible tool for
> doing category theory over arbitrary base toposes.
>
> Your question shows that a younger generation of category theorists
> is not aware of those things. In a sense this is good so and normal since
> it allows to look at things in a more objective way.
>
> But since this material was never really published and the copies I
> provided
> are not of the best quality (see
> https://www2.mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de/~streicher/FibCatTexts/)
> <https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/SqgqCyoj8PuMEVoqcM2-CM?domain=mathematik.tu-darmstadt.de>
> I
> think it would be a service to the community to have them available in
> more readable form.
>
> Whether it is necessary to translate them I am not so sure.
>
> In any case I am not interested in heating up an old and by now dead
> conflict.
> My intention just is to preserve important work for future generations
> since I found reading it most delightful.
>
> I was told to make an official submission but could not find any form
> for that. Rather have the impression that these things are decided by some
> responsible board. It is their decision but it might be helpful to
> express on the cat-list whether one is interested in the preservation
> of this material. Just to find out whether it is worth the effort to
> retype those things.
>
> Thomas
>
>
>
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